Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Local, state, national and international agencies have organized resources to keep the public well informed about swine flu.Local Harris County Public Health & Environmental Services (HCPHES) has created a Swine and Pandemic Flu Resources page to provide information for businesses, healthcare providers, first responders, educators, and the public.

StateThe Texas Department of Health Services also has an extensive listing of resources on its swine flu page including information for professionals and news releases about precautions such as school closures.

Commercial VendorsEBSCO Publishing announced that its DynaMed is providing free swine flu information to health care providers and institutions throughout the world. DynaMed'sSwine Influenza resource helps medical care providers stay current "with recommendations for monitoring, diagonosing, and treating patients with flu-like illnesses."Gale Cengage Learning is providing free access to dozens of eBooks in Gale Virtual Reference Library and to its newly created Swine Flu Portal in Global Issues in Context which is updated daily.

Houston Area school closings provided by newspaper or public radio sources.**************************************************************************As of 4/30/09 some of the latest links from the CDC include:

***************************************************************************The following links are taken from a swine flu information packet annotated and emailed by the CDC to various agencies.

Podcasts/Videos

Swine Flu Video Podcast: In this video, Dr. Joe Bresee, with the CDC Influenza Division, describes swine flu - its signs and symptoms, how it's transmitted, medicines to treat it, steps people can take to protect themselves from it, and what people should do if they become ill.

BAM! Body and Mind. Teacher's Corner: In this activity, students will conduct an experiment on washing their hands. They will learn that "clean" hands may not be so clean after all and the critical importance of washing their hands as a way to prevent the spread of disease.

Scrub Club: The site features a fun and educational animated Webisode with seven "soaper-heros" who battle nasty villains who represent germs and bacteria. Kids learn the six key steps to proper handwashing through a webisode, handwashing song, interactive games, and activities for kids, and educational materials for teachers are also available to download.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Modeled on the American Memory project from the U.S. Library of Congress, the World Digital Library is now available in seven languages - Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. Partners include UNESCO, archives and museums from around the world, the Library of Congress (who maintains the site) and other national libraries. The World Digital Library makes available for free over the Internet in a variety of formats, languages and time periods "significant primary materials, including manuscripts, maps, rare books, recordings, films, prints, photographs, architectural drawings, and other types of primary sources."

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Celebrate Earth Day today and every day with tips from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The EPA has an Earth Day site with information about the history of Earth Day, a widget to get daily environmental information, environmental podcasts, and practical ideas for everyone to help make Earth a greener place.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

According to an April 10, 2009 press release, the National Academies completed "the first phase of a partnership with Google to digitize the library's collection of reports from 1863 to 1997, making them available – free, searchable, and in full text – through Google Book Search." Plans are to have the entire collection of nearly 11,000 reports digitized by 2011.

The press release describes the following available reports:

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 1 (1863–1894). This was the first NAS publication series, and it includes information about the Academy's early work for the government on topics such as how to prevent compass deviation which sent iron warships off course, whether the metric system of weights and measures should be adopted, and how the new U.S. Geological Service should be organized.

Investigation of the Scientific and Economic Relations of the Sorghum Sugar Industry (1882). This report was the Academy's first self-initiated study, produced by the first committee to include non-Academy members.

Proposed U.S. Program for the International Geophysical Year, 1957-1958. American participation in the International Geophysical Year – a historic, worldwide scientific effort that investigated the workings of the Earth and saw the launch of the first satellites – was guided and coordinated by a committee of the Academy.

The Polar Regions and Climatic Change (1984) Changes in Earth's polar regions are widely covered in the news today, but the Academies have been studying this phenomenon for more than 20 years.

The National Academies is made up of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine, and the National Research Council. Although private nonprofit institutions, they operate under a congressional charter to provide science, technology, and health policy advice to the nation. In 1863 President Abraham Lincoln "signed into being" the National Academy of Science to "investigate, examine, experiment, and report upon any subject of science or art" when asked by any department of the government. Expansions included the National Research Council in 1916, the National Academy of Engineering in 1964, and the Institute of Medicine in 1970.

Thursday, April 09, 2009

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has created a page to help scientists who must submit final peer-reviewed journal manuscripts arising from NIH funded research to the digital archive PubMed Central. NIH Public Access and NIH Manuscript Submission - Useful Resources & Tools includes information about how to address copyright and how to submit and cite papers. It also has links to the NIH Manuscript Submission System and to the PMID:PMCID converter tool for translating PUBMed Identifiers (PMID) to PMC Identifiers (PMCID) or vice versa.

According to the NIH Public Access Policy, "Final, peer-reviewed manuscripts must be posted to the NIHMS upon acceptance for publication, and be made publicly available on PMC no later than 12 months after the official date of publication."